On New Year’s Eve 2008, during a conversation with curator Hans Ulrich-Obrist at Vitamin Creative Space’s Beijing branch, artist-provocateur Ai Weiwei predicted: “2008 was the first year that China safeguarded legal rights; it’s when people started to wake up. But in 2009, I think China will confront greater problems.”

An irreverent artist group’s unannounced act of skywriting ignites controversy over the acceptable representation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki’s atomic tragedies and raises questions about the taboo of addressing Japan’s wartime aggression.

“For the duration of the exhibition, the front door of the gallery will be closed.” This less-than-hospitable-sounding announcement concludes the press release for Fiona Connor’s recent project at Michael Lett’s Karangahape Road gallery.

London-based Idris Khan is best known for dense and beguiling photographic palimpsests, which he creates by re-photographing or scanning and digitally overlaying entire series of existing printed works into single composite prints.

Raqib Shaw’s dazzling debut solo exhibition at London’s White Cube gallery was so pretty it hurt. “Absence of God” comprised the London-based artist’s signature paintings made from enamel, semi-precious stones and industrial paint on linen, their iconography trapped between fairytale and nightmare, as well as Shaw’s first foray into sculpture.

Naiza Khan chose her house in Karachi because she could envision building a studio attached to it. “We carved out a studio space from an annex above the garage, integrated it with the house and let in the northern light,” Khan recalls.